


Chocolate Sale Day

by GloriousBookwyrm



Category: Splatoon
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Little bit of angst at the end, Nonbinary Character, Other, This fic can fit so many of my sanitized octoling and octozon headcanons, Trans Dedf1sh, Trans Female Character, mostly - Freeform, watch me struggle to differentiate singular and plural they lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:21:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29463438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriousBookwyrm/pseuds/GloriousBookwyrm
Summary: Reef doesn’t know why chocolate always goes on sale this time of year, but they’re definitely not going to pass up on the opportunity! (Aka; Reef takes Dedf1sh to the surface but it’s definitely not a date or anything)
Relationships: Dedf1sh/Octoling OC (implied), Dedf1sh/Reef (implied)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Chocolate Sale Day

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Day After Valentines’ everyone! This is my favorite February holiday!

Chocolate Sale Day

Reef fidgeted, avoiding eye contact with their co-conspirator, “So, I’m not sure why, but the Inklings always start selling chocolate really cheap starting today, and, um, I happen to have today off, too, so if you want I can sneak us out and-“ They hadn’t even finished the sentence when Dedf1sh interrupted, eyes glowing brightly.

“Really? But won’t my appearance stand out there as much as here?” She looked nervously hopeful, swaying a little bit on the balls of her feet as her tentacles started to curl slightly around her arms.

“Nah, Inklings are way less suspicious of weird stuff,” Reef said, “I haven’t heard anything about creepy testing facilities or green Octolings since you showed up, either. Everyone’ll probably think it’s some new fad or something, trust me.” At that pronouncement, Dedf1sh grabbed Reef’s arm and squeezed, claws digging in slightly, the way she always did when too excited for words. Reef fought valiantly to ignore the heat rising in their cheeks and the tingling where Dedf1sh touched them. It was a losing battle, as it always was, but fortunately she mistook Reef’s discomfort for being caused by her poison, and quickly let go. Actually, examining the slightly teal claw marks as they rubbed feeling back into their arm, Reef considered that Dedf1sh’s poison might have been a contributing factor.

An hour later, Dedf1sh was oozing out of the kettle into Inkopolis Square, while Reef pulled something out of a shadowy corner. It was a soft, worn looking hoodie the same color as Reef’s tentacles, and at Dedf1sh’s curios look, they explained while pulling it on, “The Inklings won’t recognize my uniform, but it makes the escaped Octos nervous. I’ve experimented a bit, and just covering the armor puts folks at ease, and if we have to rush back I can pull it off quickly. It also has pockets!” Dedf1sh stuck her hand in one of Reef’s pockets and grinned appreciatively at its size and warmth. After a long few seconds, she stepped back and started looking around at the bright city square, to the shared disappointment and relief of Reef’s hearts.

“So many buildings! Which one has the chocolate?” Dedf1sh had stepped fully into the square and was almost vibrating, trying to look in every direction at once. Reef laughed softly, and scanned the storefronts quickly, pointing when they recognized the Inklish word for “candy” on a sign. The store was, like many of the surrounding stores, covered in pink and red decorations. This particular store also had a large window, through which Reef could see a somewhat picked-over looking array of chocolate. As soon as Dedf1sh saw it, she grabbed Reef’s hand, this time mindful of her claws, tugging them through the door and toward the candy. 

A bell rang as they pushed through the door, and a kindly looking older Inkling woman waved from behind a counter, shouting something eager and incomprehensible. This, Reef realized, was the biggest flaw in their plan. Although they had been picking up quite a lot of Inklish by listening in on conversations and by stealing the occasional magazine, and they had taught what they learned to Dedf1sh, neither one of them was conversational. The Inkling seemed to realize the problem, however, and turned to shout something through a doorway. Fairly soon, a sulky looking Inkling girl slouched through, one hand stuffed in a pants pocket and the other pulling some kind of white pod out of her ears. Eyeing the Octoling pair like intruders, she leaned against the wall behind the counter. Even her dark purple tentacles seemed to sulk, hanging loose down the sides of her head instead of in one of the many complicated styles Reef had seen on other Inklings. She listened to what the woman behind the counter said, then turned toward Reef and Dedf1sh, and said, in halting Octonese, “Grams says point to what you want and say how much. I can say the price.” At the surprised looks on the Octoling’s faces, she continued, “I have a friend who teaches me this language.”

Dedf1sh immediately shot off toward the display cases, but Reef hung back to talk to the girl. They managed to learn a surprising amount about making chocolate and about how boring the girl, Laura, thought the whole thing was, given the language gap. She was just regaling Reef with how torturous waking up at 5AM (a time that, if Reef translated it correctly, was a hour after they had to report to roll call) to make the stuff was, when Dedf1sh returned, carrying a stack of boxes. Reef pulled out the Inkling money they had scrounged together for today, and tried to mentally calculate if it was enough. Laura saved them from that by glancing over at her grandmother and hitting a button on the register. “That is exactly enough. Thank you for buying here.” Reef handed over the coins, and Laura gave Dedf1sh a bag to put the chocolate in.

Afterwards, the duo wandered around the square for the rest of the afternoon. Dedf1sh shared some of her chocolate, and it was so sweet and creamy that Reef could almost understand why she was so obsessed with the candy. At one point, they ran into a group of Octolings, resting between Turf matches. At first the group was wary of Reef, eyeing their tentacles as if the sculpted curls might represent their actual mood, but Dedf1sh eagerly greeted them anyway, and within a few minutes her cheerfulness had thoroughly disarmed the other Octolings, and they were helping Reef practice some phrases in Inklish. As they had predicted, no one gave Dedf1sh’s appearance any mind, and a few Inklings even stopped to shout that her “dye-job” was fresh. For a moment, Reef thought they saw a pink-tentacled Octoling with an unusually small tentacle clone strapped to her chest eyeing Dedf1sh with barely disguised panic, but then the crowd obscured Reef’s view, and their green-skinned friend was dragging them towards something she wanted to get a closer look at, and Reef entirely forgot their concern.

Eventually, the timer Reef set began to buzz, just as the late-afternoon sky started to turn orange. The two headed back toward the kettle, Reef pulling off their hoodie and Dedf1sh carrying her remaining chocolate. She looked wistfully back towards the shining city square, and Reef felt utterly torn when she said she didn’t want to leave. Reef couldn’t imagine going to the station and Dedf1sh not being there, but they knew the station really couldn’t be the best place for her. It was small, and cramped, and the more Reef thought about it, the more they realized that Dedf1sh had never been given any other option besides the Octarian government, or whoever had taken her memories and freedom in the first place. “You-uh-you don’t have to. If you really want to stay, I mean! I’ve still gotta run the station, and help other folks leave, but you don’t! And if you do wanna keep helping, there’s ways to help here. And if you’re worried about finding somewhere to stay, I heard one of the Octos from earlier mention something called a half-way house he’s staying at. And-and-and-“ Dedf1sh cut their rambling off with a clawed hand around their wrist, her glowing eyes locking onto Reef’s own.

“I love the surface, but I want to stay with you. I love running the station with you, and I love how much you love running the station, and how much you always want to help other people, even a lost experiment who wasn’t even a person when you found me!” Reef wanted to protest that Dedf1sh was an amazing person, but she continued on, “You made me feel like a person, and you helped me learn that I love chocolate, and I love talking to people, and I lo- I want to go home, with you. Unless you don’t want me to?” Dedf1sh trailed off, looking nervous, and Reef let out a shaky breath, smiling around the stinging in their eyes, and pulled Dedf1sh toward the kettle, a little lighter, and a little heavier.


End file.
